Consumers aren’t going to see a barley-flavored brew anytime soon in their local pub or grocery store, but the findings are an important first step toward a potential new market for beer connoisseurs, said OSU barley breeder Pat Hayes.

We started this project with a question: Are there novel flavors in barley that carry through malting and brewing and into beer? This is a revolutionary idea in the brewing world. We found that the answer is yes, Hayes said. These positive beer flavor attributes provide new opportunities for brewers and expand horizons for consumers.

In its malted form, barley is the principal source of fermentable sugars for most beers. But barley’s flavor contributions to beer are usually ascribed to the malting process rather than the grain itself.

Barley World, Hayes’ research group at OSU, with financial support from the beer industry, began with two barley varieties thought to have positive flavor attributes in beer: Golden Promise, developed and released in Great Britain, and OSU’s own barley variety, Full Pint. They then crossbred the two. That resulted in several hundred breeding lines of genetic seed stock. Researchers grew the offspring in test plots in Corvallis, Lebanon and Madras.

But there was a logistical challenge in preparing that barley for brewing and sensory testing. OSU’s progeny of Golden Promise and Full Pint each yielded only about 200 grams of malt — not enough for a reasonable sample to produce large quantities of beer for a standard sensory panel.

Bob Monsour, brewing research scientist at Rahr Malting Company in Minnesota, bottles beer brewed from barley grown by OSU breeders. Photo courtesy of Dustin Herb, Oregon State University

That’s when OSU teamed with Minnesota-based Rahr Malting Company and New Glarus Brewing in Wisconsin. The companies had developed a brewing system that could produce a single bottle of beer from each unique malt. Dustin Herb, a graduate student in OSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences, spent almost a year at Rahr participating in the micro-malting, nano-brewing and sensory processes.

Out of that initial partnership, about 150 beers were prepared for sensory testing. Each panelist tasted the beers once and then rated them on a scale in their amount of difference compared to an industry standard control beer.

The panelists found that beer brewed with Golden Promise scored significantly higher in fruity, floral and grassy flavors. Beer with Full Pint was significantly higher in malty, toffee and toasted flavors.

The progeny are showing all possible combinations of those traits. And, since researchers had been conducting DNA fingerprinting on these progeny, they can now assign certain regions of the barley genome as being responsible for these flavors. The study also found that there were some differences based on where the barley was grown, but the genetic effect was larger than the environment.

OSU barley breeder Patrick Hayes holds a stalk of barley in a test plot at Hyslop Field Lab near Corvallis. Photo courtesy of Pat Hayes, Oregon State University

Based on the results of more Golden Promise-Full Pint progeny, finer structure genetic mapping of barley flavor genes is underway with Rahr. Researchers are also working with Deschutes Brewery in Bend to produce more representative beers from three of the selected progeny. OSU is producing 100 pounds of malt of each variety as well as a control sample called Copeland.​All three have unique flavor attributes and are relatively easy to grow. They have outstanding malt profiles. Deschutes is prepared to brew the same beer twice for each of those three and compare that to the control. Those beers are then destined to be sent to other brewers who will conduct their own sensory panels.

In addition to Herb, OSU Barley Project members Tanya Filichkin, Scott Fisk and Laura Helgerson contributed to the research. Collaborators included scientists in England, Canada, Scotland, Spain and the U.S.

Laura Helgerson, the Oregon State University faculty research assistant who oversees the barley plants in the greenhouse and the field, examines a 2-row barley strain that’s getting close to harvest stage. Photos by Patty Mamula

By Patty MamulaFor the Oregon Beer GrowlerThe barley research at Oregon State University is attracting worldwide and local attention from brewers, researchers and scientific institutions.Department head Pat Hayes suggested two women researchers as subjects for this issue.Tanya Filichkin heads up the tissue lab that pioneered the double haploid genetic process for barley about two years ago. A 15-year veteran of the department from Russia, Filichkin patiently explained the entire process to me, step-by-step. Although I generally understood it, I would not pretend to be an expert when explaining it.The process, which uses spores from barley tillers to grow green regenerates in lab cultures, cuts the time to breed a pure barley line from 12 years or more to one or two. Significantly, Filichkin and her assistants are not manipulating genes or doing any genetic modification to develop this pure line. “We’re using natural processes,” she said.“We collaborate with many industries. Our main goal in the lab right now is to get a pure line for malting quality.”One of their clients is Anheuser-Busch. The mega-brewery tried unsuccessfully to produce its own double haploids. Now they have a contract with OSU to buy 1,000 plants for $19 each. Filichkin said OSU has customers from around the globe, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and several universities.Laura Helgerson oversees the barley greenhouse and cares for the experimental plants, both indoors and in the fields. She started as a temporary worker three years ago after graduating with a degree in environmental studies. Soon she was a full-time, permanent faculty research assistant.She said that the industry standard has changed from 6-row to 2-row barley, partly because that’s what brewers want. Craft brewers, especially those in the Northwest, are interested in having a locally grown and malted barley to complement the local hops for a true Northwest beer. Great Western in Vancouver has been the only malting name in town until recently. Now there are three craft malting operations.

Tanya Filichkin, the head of the barley tissue lab at Oregon State University, holds a cultured container of rooting plantlets. The OSU barley research group pioneered the genetic process of producing double haploids out of anther culture, reducing the time to develop pure lines from 12 years to two.

Seth Klann has been growing one of OSU’s barley varieties called Full Pint. His family runs a large farm outside of Madras in Central Oregon. Klann malts their barley under the Mecca Grade Estate malt name.Tom Hutchison, out of Baker City, owns Gold Rush Malt. He contracts with a local farmer to grow Full Pint barley.And Rogue Brewing is leasing a 200-acre barley farm in the Tygh Valley. Rogue is growing winter and spring malting barley and has trademarked the varieties as Dare and Risk. Rogue has used both types for brewing and distilling. Other Northwest craft malting operations are in development.Does barley matter for beer flavor? That’s one of the main questions OSU’s barley researchers are seeking to answer. One of the school’s grad students is currently involved in a flavor project. Besides breeding barley for flavors specifically requested by craft and microbrewers, other desirable traits include cold tolerance and disease resistance.As craft brewing continues to grow, barley production is rising in Oregon to meet the increasing demand for local ingredients. With the influx of some new funding, OSU will soon have a lab for malting small, experimental varieties.The recent FDA approval of barley as a healthy, outstanding source of fiber with a unique profile that fights cholesterol has opened up a whole new line of interest in the grain that was once primarily grown as feed for livestock, said Filichkin.To keep up with all the OSU research activity, follow them on http://barleyworld.org.